The Love of Naive Melody, ENG 102

Noah Leverett

Ronda Dively English 102

2/26/2014

The Love of Naive Melody

                All that can be seen and heard are darkness, claps, cheers and the dynamic image of a man taking a guitar strap off of his shoulder.  All of a sudden a dreamy synthesizer comes in and provides something like a heartbeat, resonating consistently with a rhythm soon manifested with drums.  A lamp stands firmly in place and a man with a microphone stands next to it, jerking his body in random motions with the music.  Soon a flute starts playing the melody, an incredibly unique and original tune that could have been from Mozart.  In the shadows you can see a bookcase in the background, a guitarist, and three back-up singers.  A screen with random naked body parts flashes images like a power point presentation.  As the flute concludes its youthful introduction, David Byrne starts to sing:  "Home!  It's where I want to be pick me up and turn me round...!  Did I find you or you find me...?  There was a time, before we were born...  And you love me till my heart stops...!  Love me till I'm dead..."  The dancing, the energy!  All of it fitting like a puzzle, perfectly, with the music being played.  After a couple minutes of powerful singing and consistent instrumental, the performers mysteriously start walking backwards.  The synthesizer makes its way back on stage, and Byrne, clearly happy to be where he was in that very moment, starts dancing with the lamp he was standing next to the entire song.  With complete control and playfulness, he tosses it around and on its way to be broken only to cradle it in his arms as if he were dancing with a woman.  And though he is simply dancing with a lamp it is as though he is dancing with a woman because the music and background set an ambience meant entirely for romance.

                Talking Heads' performance of Naive-Melody in 1984 is an extremely high quality performance for various reasons.  Not only does it provide striking visuals and interesting images, but its musical quality exceeds expectations.  There are many wonderful music videos and performances of songs out there but most of them rely too heavily on their music.  The Talking Heads, in their performance in Stop  Making Sense, bring to the audience's attention a song that shares happiness and the transcendental potential of music and performance art.  David Byrne wrote the song, and describing it, he says

That's a love song made up almost completely of non sequiturs, phrases that may have a strong emotional resonance but don't have any narrative qualities. It's a real honest kind of love song. I don't think I've ever done a real love song before. Mine always had a sort of reservation, or a twist. I tried to write one that wasn't corny, that didn't sound stupid or lame the way many do. I think I succeeded; I was pretty happy with that.

If the writer would call it a love song, then a love song is what it is, and as a listener, it truly succeeds in its mission.  As SIU students, we are keenly interested in the concept of love.  Though we may not be interested in finding our soul mate at this very moment, it is always on the horizon, and this song speaks to our innate desire to find our loved one.  The performance of Talking Heads' Naive melody radiated good music, striking visuals, a youthful energy, and the purest form of love to the ears of not only the audience of the night but to the ears and eyes of listeners worldwide.

                The music is really the foundation to any musical performance on stage.  A musical performer relies heavily, and obviously, on his or her musical talent.  Fortunately for the Talking Heads, David Byrne is a good singer and the rest of his band is good instrumentalists.  The guitarist was holding down the strings and strumming so he was almost contributing percussion to the song.  The three back-up singers provided great background sounds.  Overall, the music was intensely dreamy.  When in the midst of difficult homework and never ending study sessions, are dreamy song can be all a student needs to relax and detach from the burden of school.  It could be simply because of the synthesizers but in my opinion the keyboard, singers, guitarist, bassist and drums take you are a magical journey far away from reality, yet still based in something familiar, which is love.  With this magical journey, a student can get his or her mind off the biology test the next day, or the excruciatingly complicated Calculus formula, and simply unwind.  In this service David Byrne and the band Talking Heads facilitate music that de-stresses the listener from the toils of the day. The singer’s powerful passion about the music and the lyrics he is singing and the band's fantastic instrumental talent facilitate this uplifting musical orchestra.

                One of the greatest parts of the Naïve Melody performance is what is seen on stage.  Because the background starts out as a bunch of books it is as if you are in the library reading.  There is also a lamp standing on the stage and people dancing which provide a really relaxed ambience.  Many people go home and sit on their couch and turn on a lamp, and this represents home for them.   The light of the lamp emits some strange magic that is calming.  In the background is a video screen with a dynamic set of images, ranging from landscapes, pictures of knocked over chairs, and human flesh.  Though this is somewhat weird it magically goes really well with the song.  Anyone with a little bit of an abstract taste would enjoy the screen in the background.  Even though it is a little weird, it blends really well with the synthesizers and the strange guitar rhythm.  There is no way the music would bore you, but if it somehow not your type of music, watching the screen in the back and what happens on stage provides a dynamic view of some creativity and difference.  The naked body parts aren’t necessarily vulgar, because it is just arms and legs, and an occasional butt.  The screen in the background is important because it is so random.  It makes the feel of the song not so serious.  Yes, he is talking about love, but why have a heart attack over it?  If there are images of random cities at dusk and people’s arms, the viewers will be relaxed.  Watching people dance and seeing beautiful images behind them ultimately makes an audience more intensely interested in the performance.

                With dreamy audio and strikingly weird visuals, the Talking Heads could transmit their overall message to their viewers: Love.  Utilizing lyrics that tell a love story, they put their viewers in the scene of the lyrics, as if they are the ones actually experiencing the Naïve Melody.  “Heyyah I’ve got plenty of time… Heyyah you got light in your eyes.”  The audience and viewers listening to the song imagine themselves with their loved one or future loved one when listening to the song.  The lyrics also emphasize the word “Home”.  Home is where the heart is, isn’t it? Often student's attending SIU miss their true home, and this song can bring their weary minds back to that wonderful setting.    The powerful way he sings the song clearly shows that he is in a state of deep love.  Only when someone is in love can they perform with such talent and capability.  Listening to this song makes one only want more, because everyone gravitates toward lovely music.  Also, throughout the performance are smiling faces.  This is a deal breaker, because without the smiling faces it would be much harder to watch.  And why you may ask?  Well, simply because of love.  They are smiling and so they are in love, not only with the people they are sharing with, but also with the song they are playing.

                I fell in love with the Talking Heads performance when I was only about 10, riding in a car back from a farm that was deep in the trenches of nature.  I was sitting in the car, and my brother said, “Watch this concert!”  So I did.  And it was wonderful; it took me on a journey completely unexpected, and my favorite song was Naïve Melody.  David Byrne dancing with a lamp made it for me.  It put everything together in one magical moment, like the climax of a novel or the finale of the fireworks show.  He randomly grabs the lamp and starts dancing with it, a creative expression of the performance arts with the spiritual entity called Light and Love.  Rarely does a class teach the subject of Love, and somehow this performance succeeds in this endeavor.  This is a performance an SIU student can fall back on when exploring the mysterious concepts of Love.  When in need of relaxation and an entertaining performance, a student can simply watch this video.  It is so positive, and this is why I recommend it for a student.  With all the homework and tests, a student needs some sort of incubation that will detach them from the harsh realities of higher education.  They need something that will tell them that everything is going to be okay, to relax.  This performance does exactly that.  It doesn't burden them with formulas and definitions, but brings them to a state of ecstasy and introduces a love story that they can relate to.  And this is exactly what SIU needs: a performance that brings enthusiastic visuals, relaxing music, and an ultimately soothing song to the hearts of the student body.